Owls in 4S Ranch!

Dave and I just went for a short walk around our neighborhood. We heard coyotes yapping and howling in the distance and commented on how we hadn't seen one in a while. A few minutes later, we heard an unusual sound and followed it to the condos across the street from us. I looked up at the rooftops and saw an unusual protrustion. It looked too small to be a satellite. We stood under it for a while, I was convinced that it was an owl since owls are pretty common in San Diego. But we weren't sure since it had stopped hooting, wasn't moving, and the lighting was very poor.... But then it flew!

We followed it to some of our neighbors' homes and found there were 2 of them, perched on different chimneys hooting at each other. We watched them "talk" and fly from one spot to another, until we decided we had to go home and get ready for bed.

I love the wildlife here!

Oldies are Goodies - Hi-Tec Adventure Race 1999

Once upon a time, long long ago (back in 1999)... my brother organized 2 teams to compete in the Hi-Tec adventure race in Connecticut. This is a race comprised of teams of 3 with everyone competing together throughout the race. There are 4 main components: orienteering, 5-7 miles of trail-running, 10-15 mile mountain-biking, and 1-2 mile(s) kayaking in inflatable kayaks, with tons of team-oriented tests scattered throughout the race (such as climbing 12 foot walls, getting through "spiderwebs" without touching rope, doing puzzles blindfolded, and crawling through the mud).

My brother had an idea to design t-shirts. Everyone was responsible for getting caricatures done and to send them to me.

Front of the shirt:

back:

Kabuki Klowns was my bro's team. It had my brother Ben, his good lawyer friend Kristin and her husband Carlos. They were the "biking" team.

2 Studs and the Dave was my team with me, Dave, and my bro's marathon running friend Jenn. We were the "running" team. Jenn was supposed to ensure that we kept at a 9 minute mile during the running portion.

We also had a huge support/cheer group of my parents and some of my brother's really good college friends: Jeral, Sharon, and Audranne.

They were running around, following us on the course and snapping pictures at every moment. It was so cool! Below are some oldies that Jeral found for me in his old files. He originally had this fanatastic website dedicated to the race. It was really awesome with everyone's bios and pictures, and whatnot. Unfortunately, the site went down several years ago. Stupid me always forgot to download the photos, so I recently harassed Jeral to look for them again. Here are a few that he's found:

Kabuki Klowns minus Ben. Where did my brother go?

2 Studs and the Dave orienteering.
One of the "tests" was a suprise at the start of the biking portion. Yup, each team was only allowed to use 2 bikes during the biking portion! For my team, our strategy was to have 2 people bike ahead, one person run. Then we would stagger it, every so often one person would drop their bike and start running. The runner would catch up to the bike and start running. Unfortunately, for Kabuki Klowns, Kristin and Carlos were much taller than my brother and if he were to ride one of their bikes, uh, I think the results would be disastrous to his future. On top of that, my brother's seat was fixed! Poor Kristin and Carlos. I think they ended up running a whole lot more than they originally anticipated.

Carlos running
Jenn running
Mud Stud biking (you'll understand the nickname later)
Dave biking
Ben biking or is he posing?? Ha ha...
One of the team tests were to climb a HUGE wall. I guess it was 12 feet? The tricky part was that you could only use ropes once one teammate makes it up the wall. 2 Studs and the Dave got really lucky. When we got to the wall, there were several other teams there, and they were really helpful. These guys saw us and just offered to help. I started climbing up Jenn and Dave, and the next thing I knew, I was flying up the wall!

The guys then pulled Jenn up.
Oops, the pictures are out of order. Here's me getting yanked up!
And then while Dave's getting pulled up, Jenn and I were checking out the surroundings. Jenn saw Jeral, whereas I was exclaiming at the next "test" that we were going to encounter.
Me shocked at seeing Jeral.
We were such hams. :)

After we crawled down the ropes, it was time for the ....

MUD CRAWL!

Dave jumped right in, while the girls got used to being dirty. Aw, there goes the nice white pinnies!

Everyone commented on how Jenn's white spot was a lot bigger than everyone else's.

Check out the mud dripping from us!

Marine hurdles!

Running to the finish line!
2 Studs and the Dave finished!
We had a respectable finish, I believe. I can't really remember. I do think that we finished about 20 minutes before the Kabuki Klowns. But then again, they got totally screwed with the whole biking thing. They had planned to catch up to us then. They then got screwed with the high wall, because when they got there, there weren't any other teams around to help them out. I think at one point, my brother climbed up Carlos and then jumped for the top of the wall. But he didn't get a good grasp and ended falling to the ground! My dad saw it and kept saying, it was a good thing my mom was looking another way at that very moment. Or else she would have freaked.

But it was a great accomplishment that we all finished and had a fantastic time!

Dave's nickname for the race was MacGuyver. Apparently, my bike fell apart during the race, and Dave managed to use an innertube to tie the bike together enough so that it survived the rest of the biking portion.

If I get more digital pictures of the race, I'll post them up sometime.

Hmmm... I might have some pictures of Hi-Tec 2000 which Dave, my brother, and I formed a team and competed again. When/If I scan in those photos, I'll get them up sometime too.